Tuesday on The AIR  it’s Radio Free Charleston time, and just like too many recent weeks, it’s time for yet another one-third-new, three-hour  episode of Radio Free Charleston. You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay on this page, and  listen to the cool embedded player overfound elsewhere on this page.

Yes, it’s one more hybrid edition of Radio Free Charleston at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday.   This week we open with a full hour of  local and independent music, and then we hit you with two hours of classic Radio Free Charleston International from early 2018.  Between MG, stormy weather, outside assignents and catching up on all the photos and videos from our recent Marx Toy Convention trip, there just wasn’t enough time to lay down three full hours of new radio this week.

It’s still a killer show as our first hour, opens with great new music from Beckley’s Bottle and Bride. You’ll also hear cool music from Chicago’s The Alright Maybes, local legend Brian Diller & The Ride and Corduroy Brown. We also have a new music from Julian Lennon, Adrian Belew,  Reginia Spektor, plus some classic tracks and a remixed and remastered Redd Kross track that sounds new, even though it was first released 35 years ago.

The second and third hours of our show re-present a mixtape edition of Radio Free Charleston International from 2018, when yours truly really wanted to see how weird he could get.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

RFCv5 093

hour one
Bottle and Bride “A Call To The Sea”
The Alright Maybes “Gone”
Corduroy Brown “Lookin’ Over My Shoulder”
Adrian Belew “The Saturday Morning Roar”
Jim Lange “Offering (guitar solo with improvisation)”
Hello June “Time”
Brian Diller & The Ride “No. 15”
Redd Kross “McKenzie”
The Settlement“Enter Mission”
Regina Spektor “Spacetime Fairytale”
Static Fur “Take My Ashes”
Julian Lennon “Save Me”
The BrotherSisters “Find The Cost of Freedom”

hour two
DEVO “Don’t Shoot (I’m A Man) Polysics Remix”
New Model Army “Did You Make It Safe”
No Doubt “Total Hate 95”
Wings “Spin It On”
ELP “Are You Ready Eddie”
Emmy Lou and The Rhythm boys “Bip Bop Boom”
ELO “Easy Money”
Kent Ford and the Hep Jump Stompers “Rockabilly Queen”
Madness “Drip Fed Fred”
Led Zepplin “Rock and Roll”
Kate Bush “Violin”
Roger Daltry “Free Me”
Split Enz “What’s The Matter With You”
Oingo Boingo “Who Do You Want To Be Today”
The Plasmatics “Living Dead”
Adam Ant “Charge of the Heavy Brigade”
Mike Peters “This Is War”

hour three
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes “The Harder They Come”
Pete Townsend “Squeezebox”
Regina Spektor “Oh Marcello”
Agent Orange “Say It Isn’t True”
PM “You’ve Got Me Rockin'”
The Dickies “If Stuart Could Talk (live)”
Franz Ferdinand and Sparks “Piss Off”
Hazel O’Connor “Not For You”
Goldfinger ‘I’m Down”
Marcella Detroit “Cool People”
The Warner Brothers “Hey Mama”
Hasil Adkins “She Said”
Joe Jackson “Someone Up There”
Neil Young “Wonderin'”
Mel C “Yeh, Yeh, Yeh”
Motorhead “Ace of Spades (alternate take)”
Nirvana “Turn Around”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 3 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of MIRRORBALL at 1 PM, and Ska Madness at 2 PM. At 3 PM we have two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

Part of our trip to the Marx Toy Convention about ten days ago involved going to The Mound Museum in Moundsville for a book signing. You can see some video of that HERE, and you’ll be getting a review of that book sometime in the next week or so.

Mel and I had never been inside the Mound Museum before, and I was focused on shooting video and getting set to up to record a talk by the authors and some former employees of the Marx Toy Factory (sadly that video was not usable), and I was in the big room where the book signing took place for close to half an hour before I realized that, on the way to the book signing, I had walked right past a 30-foot long, 13-foot-high cast of a skeleton of a Stegadon, a large prehistoric elephantine beast related to the Mastodon and Wooly Mammoth.

You see, it turns out that what everybody calls “The Mound Museum” is actually The Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex and it’s usually unjustly overlooked, being next to the world’s largest burial mound, and across the street from the gigantic Medievel-looking former Federal Penetentiary.  We’d gone right past this place for years and I had no idea that the bones of prehistoric critters of massive propertions were on display within.

When I finally saw it, it was a “Wait, What?” moment.  I grabbed a few photos and Mel found a FiestaWare display, and we decided that we’re going to have to make another visit just to see this cool museum (which also has large displays for Marx Toys and Marble King and other stuff) and explore it further, because this is really just a small part of what they have.

Aside from the Stegadon that snuck up on me, it was a revelation to see how small the Dimetradon was by comparison. Every toy Dimetradon I had as a kid was woefully out of scale with my other toy dinosaurs. I feel disillusioned. Next thing you know they’ll tell us that Dimetradons weren’t really even dinosaurs at all.

Anyway, today’s mini-photo essay is just a taste of The Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex. Enjoy…

Sometimes when you’re laser-focused on shooting video, you miss the little things like this fella.

The Dimetradon is not quite as fearsome when you realize it’s about the size of a monitor lizard. My toys made it seem like they were 20 feet long.

Informative signs explain that The Stegadon is not a Wooly Mammoth. Also, it’s on loan from a couple in Fairmont, who evidently had one to spare.

Heavy Metal fans gathered around this exhibit of prehistoric skulls.

More elephantine ancestor artifacts on display, including a tusk, which may have come from Alabama.

Of course Mel wandered off and found the FiestaWare display. So I swiped this and the next two photos from her.

Man, that suff’s colorful.

Think of Mel’s photos as a harbinger of a mini-photo-essay to come.

We leave you with one more look at the Stegadon skeleton cast. Notice how the Dimetradon looks like a frightened housecat in the presence of this mighty beast. He’s lucky that he doesn’t get stomped on as the Stegadon yells, “Damn You! Your toys are all lies!”

Tuesday our next Mini-photo-essay will look at Francis Turner’s Marx Toy Museum, which opens once a year for a special sale.

This week’s art is small painting, done with thick acrylic paint on a cheap canvas board.  This is another where I used a few plastic forks and knives, but I also used a lot of straight-edge and laid down pencils before painting. It’s a random city scene, with no real point of reference, since it’s not based on anything specific. I just wanted to see if I could toss together random elements and make it seem real.

This one had to be photographed, rather than scanned, and it was cropped a bit afterward.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of  Psychedelic Shack, followed at 3 PM by a recent edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday at 9 AM as part of our Sunday Haversham Recording Institute collection.

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

Tonight at 8 PM you can hear an hour of hilarious and vile comedy from Derek and Clive (also known as Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) on The Comedy Vault. Wednesday evening at 10 PM, we’ll have another new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Then, at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of The Lost Beatles Project episodes of Beatles Blast. Next week will bring you the rest of this series-within-a-series.

Today we revisit last weekend’s Marx Toy Convention at The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia .The Marx Toy Convention happens there the third weekend of June every year.

Following the first day of the Marx Toy Convention, many collectors made the short trip to The Mound Museum in nearby Moundsville, West Virginia, for a book signing and discussion about the new book, Memories of Marx Toys: Glen Dale, by Gary L. Rider and Roeseanna Dakan Keller . The authors of this oral history of The Marx Toys plant in Glen Dale signed books and presented a talk with some of the employees of the Marx Toy factory and their families. Look for a review of this book in PopCult sometime in the next week or two.

Unfortunately, a camera malfunction rendered our recording of the talk unusable. Had it not, we would have presented it here along with our wrap-up video. We do have some footage of the book signing, and we also have footage from Francis Turner’s  Marx Toy Museum, also in Moundsville, which only opens one or two nights a year since it ceased daily operation six years ago.

This is the wrap-up video of The Marx Toy Convention, but we still have more photos, so look for a short photo essay from our trip all next week, here in PopCult.

RFC 109 "Shazam Shirt" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.

This week we go back to August, 2010 for the 109th edition of Radio Free Charleston‘s video incarnation.  This ws our third “show without words,” where we showcased instrumental music and films and animation without dialogue. Our music this time came from David Synn and D.T. Stephenson, who later teamed up to form the band Frequency Down. David is back doing solo stuff again, and D.T. is in Static Fur.  We also had RFC faves, Blue Million, ripping through an instrumental blues jam during a sound check.

Our animation was courtesy of Frank Panucci and we also featured the oldest surviving Plant Ro Duction Mini Movie. We also got a quick, photographic tour of LiveMix Studio, our longtime and much-missed production partner.

Host segments were presented in the style of a comic book.  This way I was able to not speak on this episode.  Full production notes can be found HERE.

The PopCulteer
June 24, 2022

We are still forced to present bite-sized photo essays of no more than a dozen photos, so today we are going to revisit the Marx Toy Convention, where we were exactly one week ago, and just show off some of the cool toys we saw.

We had a great time and saw lots of old and new friends, but this batch of photos is focused on the toys, many of which we would have snapped up if we had any room left in the house.

You can expect several more photo essays next week, and if all goes well, a video or two this coming Sunday. We may even have a few more pictures of toys from the convention to share.

The Marx Toy Convention happens the third weekend of June every year at The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia. This year our trip included the convention, plus a side trip to The Mound Museum in Moundsville and Francis Turner’s Brigadoon-like Marx Toy Museum, also in Moundsville, which only opens one or two nights a year since it ceased daily operation six years ago. We also visited the FiestaWare Outlet Store at the Homer Laughlin plant in Newell, and you will be seeing photos or video from all of those things over the next week.

But today, get your drool cups ready, it’s all about the cool toys…

Dave Roth made these amazing-looking custom wagons for Johnny West, and if our house was three times the size it is now, we would have brought one home with us.

Another of Dave’s cool creations, this one a water wagon.

Terry Ryder’s amazing “bronzed” Johnny West and friends sculptures.

Mark Hegeman had this incredible Marx Moon Base playset for a very decent price, in great condition, but again, where would I put it?

Mark’s Moon Base set was so big it takes up two photos. The condition of the base and the playmat was remarkable.

More of James Wozniak’s long display of pure plastic joy. We showed you a bit of this in an earlier photo essay.

I don’t collect The Tigers fighting men, but if I did…

More plastic Nirvana (with a little tin) from James.

Random cool toys were everywhere you looked.

And playset collectors had plenty to contemplate.

We leave you with a Remco toy, hidden amongst the Marx stuff. The idea of a five-foot tall collapsing building playset had me mesmerized until I remembered that “five-foot tall” was not compatible with “Don’t buy anything huge.”

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and loads of or regular features. The photos and video from our trip will resume Sunday, if all goes according to plan.

Friday on The AIR we offer up a momentus new episode of MIRRORBALL, followed by an encore edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  The AIR is PopCult’s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player elsewhere on this page.

Friday at 2 PM The AIR transports you back to the Golden Age of Disco with a very, very special episode of Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL.  This just happens to be episode 54 of Mel’s Disco showcase, and Studio 54 happened to be the most famous Disco of that classic era.  Piling another coincidence on top of things, back in April when we went to see The Minutes, on Broadway, it was actually playing at The Studio 54 Theater located at the former location of the world’s most famous Disco.

We had just debuted the 50th episode of MIRRORBALL, and were aware that we were just a few weeks away from episode 54.  We decided that it’d be cool for episode 54 of MIRRORBALL to present most of the classic album, “A Night At Studio 54,” one of the best-selling Disco LPs of all time.  Knowing this, and aware of Studio 54’s policy of not allowing recording devices to be used inside the theater, we decided to record Mel’s intro on the street, right outside Studio 54, at 254 West 54th Street, New York, New York!

We put Mel’s script on her phone, and recorded her audio using our Kodak Zi8, with me trying my best to be a human windscreen and block Mel from wind and traffic noise. Then we turned off our electronic devices and got in line for the show. After we got home all I had to do was assemble the show, excise one song to fit the timeslot (sorry Ms. Summer, but we have played “Last Dance” several times already) and wait until we got to our 54th episode.

And that happens today.

A Night At Studio 54 was a double album, with its music segued between tracks by disc jockeys Marc Paul Simon and Roy Thode for continuous playing, just like they did at the nightclub itself. Despite going Gold, and almost Platinum on it’s original release, the album has been out of print for decades, since the demise of Casablanca Records, the label that released it, and was never officially issued on CD.  So now MIRRORBALL brings you most of this classic album for our 54th episode, with introductions recorded at Studio 54. Check out the hit-laden playlist…

“Le Freak” (performed by Chic)
Let’s All Chant” (performed by Michael Zager Band)
“Y.M.C.A.” (performed by Village People)
“Disco Nights (Rock-Freak)” (performed by G.Q.)
“Take Me Home” (performed by Cher)
“I Love the Nightlife” (performed by Alicia Bridges)
“I Found Love (Now That I Found You)” (performed by Love & Kisses)
“Got to Be Real” (performed by Cheryl Lynn)
“I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get It Girl)” (performed by Instant Funk)
“Hot Shot” (performed by Karen Young)
“I Love America” (performed by Patrick Juvet)
“Souvenirs” (performed by Voyage)
“Hot Jungle Drums and Voodoo Rhythm” (performed by D.C. LaRue)
“In the Bush” (performed by Musique)
“Instant Replay” (performed by Dan Hartman)
“Shake Your Groove Thing” (performed by Peaches & Herb)

Not only do you get an hour of classic Disco music, you also get to hear Mel on Broadway, and the first-ever episode of MIRRORBALL recorded on location!

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at  9 PM (kicking off a mini-marathon), Sunday at 11 PM, Monday at 9 AM, and Tuesday at 1 PM  exclusively on The AIR.

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with an encore episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that  salutes the genius of STIFF Records. You can find the full playlist HERE.

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon, Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Look for The PopCulteer, featuring photos from The Marx Toy Convention, later today.

…and all through the hotel, people met in their rooms ’cause it was hotter than hell.

Since we have to break up these photo essays into bite-sized chunks while our blog is somewhat on the fritz, today’s installment is going to focus on the night before the show, where, because it was way too hot to gather around the fire pit, lots of the Marx folks who were there for “JohnnyCon” the convention-within-a-convention, met up in one of the conference rooms that was loaned to us by the nice manager at the Hampton Inn in Wheeling.

Today we’re going to bring you photos of stuff that was being shown off and/or offered for sale by Terry Ryder and Rosemary Davis Webster. That’s Terry with a clean-shaven PopCulteer at the top of this post.  Terry let me swipe this from Facebook. I didn’t get a picture with Rosemary. Maybe next year.

In the above photo, Terry is holding a really wild-looking Buddy Charlie/All-American Fighter figure with a strange skin tone on his head and hands. I was useless in trying to figure out why, but it was really cool too see. Terry brought a lot of other cool things that she’d recently acquired, and you can see them below…

Let’s take a closer look at Buddy Charlie.

The PL board for the accessories of Princesss Wildflower. Fascinating stuff for the die-hard collector.

Terry had also picked up a really cool scrapbook/collection of original artwork by one of the Marx design team. This includes elements that were used on packaging, and this Johnny West logo that I think might have been intended for a playset that was never produced.

This guy was incredible at drawing guns (on paper, not out of a holster).

Of course, the spacemen are what caught my eye.

Rosemary didn’t have enough stuff to sell to warrant a table at the convention, but she was selling some cool horses and tack sets for Steve Corn, who couldn’t make it this year.

She was also parting with this sharp-looking Wagon and buggy, which I would have snapped up in a heartbeat if I had any room left in my house.

Rosemary was also selling this amazing Circlee X Ranch, built by Mykol Blackwell. Again, I would have grabbed this in an instant if A) we had any room for it and B) it would fit in Mel’s car. I hope it found a good home.

Here’s a back view. This really is the “one that got away.”

Such detail, including a metal stove and what looks like FiestaWare bowls.

We’ll take one last look at the bunkhouse before we leave. Check PopCult tomorrow for another mini-photo essay, this time with more pics from the Marx Toy Convention proper.

We have a single entry in our STUFF TO DO post this week. There’s plenty going on this weekend with FestivALL in full swing, but we’re just going to focus on one event.

On June 25 at The West Virginia Museum of Music, located on the second floor of The Charleston Town Center, an exhibit of photographs from the historic Skyline Bluegrass Festival will open, with a reception fro 3 PM to 5 PM.

The opening of the exhibit will feature speakers and perfromances by members of The Putnam County Pickers and Duffy Boyd, both groups that performed at the original festival.

The Skyline Bluegrass Festival was held in Ronceverte, in Greenbrier County, from 1976 to 1985. It was one of the largest bluegrass gatherings in the Eastern US, attracting 10,000 to 15,000 people each year. Performers included legends like Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Ralph Stanley and The Osborne Brothers, as well as then-newcomers like John Prine, Bela Fleck, John Hartford, New Grass Revival and many more.

West Virginia performers included Richard Hefner and the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, The Putnam County Pickers, Ramp Supper Band, Trapezoid, and Plank Road String Band.

Pat Bauserman served as the stage manager and emcee and was the only photographer onstage for the festival’s entire run. Bauserman and The West Virginia Music Hall of Fame have collaborated on this exhibit of photos and memorabilia documenting this important piece of West Virginia music heritage.

The exhibit was created with assistance from The WV Humanities Council, The Hamilton Family Fund and the James F.B. Peyton Fund.

First off, I have to explain that we are having some technical issues here at PopCult that are limiting the size of my photo essays. Because of that, today I’m just bringing you a few teaser photos from the Marx Toy Convention, which happened last weekend at The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia.

We had a great time, and I shot video and tons of photos, which will be shared with you soon.

Over the next two weeks I’ll be posting  many more photos from our weekend trip, which will include photos and video from the Marx Toy Convention, video from our side trip to The Mound Museum in Moundsville for a book signing, a look at our trip to the Marx Toy Museum, which opens once or twice a year now for special events, and a photo essay from our visit to The FiestaWare Outlet Store at the Homer Laughlin plant in Newell, West Virginia. We’ll even tell you about a really cool place you can stay in Wheeling, if you love toys and trains, that is.

The plan is to have some video ready by Sunday, and photo essays every weekday through June.

For now, I wanted to get a teaser photo essay out, while it’s still fresh in my mind.  Apologies for the skimpiness of this batch of photos, with luck I’ll be able to figure out the glitch and collect more photos into our subsequent posts.  Be aware…there’s plenty more to come…

Amazing custom wagons built by Dave Roth, just part of the literal truckload of cool Johnny West goodies he brought to the show.

Professor Jim Fuller had a ton of cool stuff, including the brightly-colored, new-edition Geronimo bodies, which were made by Pedro Olivares Perez, seen in the background in the really cool shirt. This photo was taken right after I bought the bright-yellow figure.

More of Dave Roth’s cool offerings.

Just a part of Tom Heaton’s table, including his Marx Action Figure Guide and modules, which are indispensible for any Johnny West collector. I may have instigated a new module at the show.

Just a fraction of my friend, James Wozniak’s cool plastic wares (with a little tin in the mix).

Your PopCulteer went into this show determined not to bring home too much stuff, which made resisting this Marx Train set a feat of strength on my part.

The folks in the train room, indifferent to my internal struggle.

Just a hint of the cool stuff in the playset room wraps up this photo essay. There will be plenty more to see from the Marx Toy Convention in the coming days.